Description of the attraction
Castello Firmiano, whose name in German sounds like Sigmundskron, is a spacious castle with a whole network of fortifications located in the vicinity of Bolzano, the capital of South Tyrol. Today it houses one of the sections of the Messner Mountain Museum (MMM), founded by the famous Italian climber Reinhold Messner.
The first mentions of Castello Firmiano are found in 945. Then he was known as Formicaria. In 1027, Emperor Conrad II transferred the castle to the ownership of the Bishop of Trento, and in the 12th century it passed into the possession of the ministerials - representatives of the petty knighthood, who since then began to bear the name Firmian. Around 1473, the Tyrolean ruler Sigismund the Bogaty bought the castle, renaming it Sigmundskron and adapting it to withstand firearms. From ancient Formicaria to the present day, only a few fragments have survived, mostly located at the highest points of the area.
Due to financial difficulties, Sigismund was forced to lay the castle, as a result of which the building gradually began to decline. At the end of the 18th century, it belonged to the Counts of Volkenstein, and after them - until 1994 - to the Counts of Toggenburg. It was the last owners of Castello Firmiano who restored the partially ruined castle in 1976 and opened a restaurant in it. And in 1996, the castle passed into the ownership of the province of Bolzano.
In the spring of 2003, after long confrontations, Reinhold Messner received the castle on a long-term lease to house the exposition of the Mining Museum. During the next restoration work in 2006, on the territory of Castello Firmiano, a Neolithic grave with a female skeleton was discovered, which, according to preliminary estimates, is from 6 to 7 thousand years old.
